The tracking of persons or items is of great interest in various vocations. A great deal of effort is expended implementing systems which are capable of determining the precise or approximate location of a particular person or object. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for example utilize a plurality of satellites which send signals to earthbound receivers to allow the receivers to determine their own locations via triangulation. Land based positioning systems, for example those which utilize United States Coast Guard (USCG) broadcast towers, are also capable of permitting a receiver to determine its location with reasonable accuracy.
Known technologies for tracking often require relatively expensive and potentially bulky receiving equipment, for example a global positioning receiver, and are accordingly impractical if a large number of receivers is required for a particular application. Moreover, known systems such as those utilizing global positioning technologies are not especially conducive to smaller scale applications which may require a higher degree of tracking precision or integration with other tracking or data acquisition systems. Moreover, the constituent components of known systems are in most cases permanently fixed (or permanently in orbit in the case of GPS satellites), preventing user reconfiguration to suit the needs of a particular application.
It would be desirable to provide a tracking system which could be implemented in an area the size of which could be defined by a user. Such system should provide for the tracking of a large or small number of entities, such as persons or objects, at reasonable cost. Such system should be easily portable, configurable and reconfigurable to suit the needs of a particular application. Such system should be able to be easily integrated with other tracking or data acquisition systems.